Marvel Voices: Pride #1

[cyberghostface]

 

This is a flashback to the earlier days of the X-Men. Magneto is about to attack the X-Mansion when he sees a young Bobby crying.

Comments

[tinygaylaura]

This is one of the cutest things ever!

[silverhammerman]

It's really nice to see Anthony Oliveira get to do something with Iceman's current backstory of having been in the closet for most of his life. It seems like that's been largely glossed over (as does the genuinely upsetting fact that canonically, the time travelling Teen Iceman had to go back in the closet for years after being sent back to the past) and seeing someone get to explore that, even just in a short story, is great.

[deh_tommy]

Iceman gets shoved back in the closet to make sure the timeline stays on track and the loop gets closed, but the person who forced him and friends back in the first place gets to stick around indefinitely, kill his older self for not wanting to send them back and subsequently fudges with the timeline himself to resurrect his dad.

[lizard_of_aus]

...I think I went cross-eyed trying to read all that. Who sent them back, again?

[super_fly]

Young Cable

[dianakingston]

Having read the whole thing... oy.

It's such an indictment of how Marvel writes LGBT characters that every single story in the one-shot, regardless of who's getting the focus, has the exact same "voice", and is featured in a story that's pleasant and positive and utterly toothless. Not one of these characters has nuance, or shades of grey, or complex personalities - something to sell potential new readers on following. Even Northstar gets written from Kyle's POV because Disney forbid we have a gay hero who's a bit of an arrogant snob.

[cyberghostface]

These types of anthologies, regardless of who's publishing them or what they're even about, are always going to be little more than puff pieces 90% of the time. They're just meant to be celebrations of the characters. If you have five pages to tell a story you're not going to have much in the way of time for gritty characterization.

[dianakingston]

Even within a five-page story, though - it's *wild* to see Daken, Mystique and Northstar being written with the exact same bland, vapid tone as every other character in the book. How is it a celebration of those characters to portray them all as, essentially, the same archetype?

[cyberghostface]

If you’re going to write a story celebrating the characters being gay and have only five pages to do it you’re probably going to do a Mystique/Destiny fluff piece as opposed to Mystique backstabbing someone.

[tinygaylaura]

I have to disagree here

Mystique's story showcased her cunning, the fact she is perfectly willing to be ruthless when dealing with the kind of trash who deserve no mercy and the bond she shared with Irene

Daken's story acknowledged just how lonely and unhappy he was, that his encounter with Somnus left such an impression

Northstar's story was more about how Kyle feels about Northstar than about Northstar himself but it still acknowledged that he can come off as a jerk to people but has a good heart under that

Are your criticisms about this specific book or just all the characters in general?

[deh_tommy]

When LGBT characters are written as antagonistic or just generally unpleasant, the writers usually get called [homo/bi/trans/etc.]phobes and problematic. When they’re written otherwise or the writers try to avoid potential offence, they get called [spine/tooth]less and safe/pandering. We can’t bloody win...

Still, that’s weird having Magneto of all characters be the one to comfort young Bobby Drake here, given the latter should probably know about the former by his reputation and how he was about to blow him up with missiles.

Re: Are your criticisms about this specific book or just all the characters in general?

[icon_uk]

Agreed, it's a nice moment, but it's deeply out of character for Silver Age Magneto.

Re: Are your criticisms about this specific book or just all the characters in general?

[tinygaylaura]

I like the implication here that all of Magneto's silver age-yness was just him hamming it up personally and that when it's time to get serious he's more like how he was written later on in the comics

He goes from melodramatically threatening Xavier with stolen missiles to honestly comforting Bobby and I like the idea that all his corny muaha-ha-ing in the older comics is him trying to be menacing

Re: Are your criticisms about this specific book or just all the characters in general?

[zachbeacon]

I'm kind of amazed the Silver Age Magneto (who would twirl his mustache if he had one) hasn't been completely retconed out of existence (especially after HoX/PoX)

Re: Are your criticisms about this specific book or just all the characters in general?

[deh_tommy]

Like, I’m torn. On the one hand, that’s easy to forget (but worth remembering) that people are complex. More often than not radical folks are still people, and everyone’s got a soft side. That’s nice to see even supervillains having humanity, and Magneto probably would be sympathetic to Bobby here given his own childhood.

On the other... I know this isn’t the most tasteful comparison to make given Magneto’s backstory, but this scene really gives me imaginary friend Adolf Hitler from Jojo Rabbit vibes. This Magneto is not someone I’d trust with kids for any extended length of time.

[icon_uk]

Also, is that the N'Garai cairn that Bobby is sitting beside?

Nice reference, and a deeeeeeep cut of X-Men lore!

[bravest_spinja]

Oh man, Grant Morrison is going to shit.

[iamrman]

Glad to see everybody hasn't fallen for all the hype.

[zachbeacon]

*checks credits*

Wait, what?

[leahandillyana]

Everything about this book annoys me:
-Portable cameras already existed in 1900, so Moriarty boasting about having access to one makes him seem like an idiot
-Somebody with Magneto's background would be very homophobic, especially since the story in which he meets Bobby seem to be taking place in early 00s (If I counted the sliding timeline correctly), where homophobia was the norm in American society
-Seriously, where are the characters dealing with homophobia? Even the villains are explicitly not homophobic.
-WHERE ARE THE TRANS CHARACTERS?! We only have a cosplayer and a random person standing in the line. What about the heroes, the villains?
Not a single story I liked. The whole thing seems washed up to appeal to widest audience possible, diluding not only queer history and culture (they didn't even have the balls to have Somnus die of AIDS), but also the characters themselves. Plus, where's Angela. WHERE THE HELL IS ANGELA. You cannot put her on the cover but not in the stories!!!! DC Pride was bad but this is worse.

[janegray]

Somebody with Magneto's background would be very homophobic

Strongly disagree.

Guy was locked in a Nazi concentration camp. If anything could get him to sympathise with gay people, being fellow victims of Nazis would be it.

[leahandillyana]

Gay prisoners were absolutely hated by the rest of the prisoners. From my reading on death camps for school, I remember a female prisoner writing that the worst thing in the camps, worse than deaths, suffering and dehumanisation, were female prisoners loving each other. Homosexuality as one of the categories of prisoners was a taboo for decades after the war, and in Poland still is. Surviving gay prisoners were not freed with the end of the war. And correct me if I'm wrong but if Magneto was a Polish Jew, that would make his family particularly orthodox even for Jewish standards, and thus least gay-friendly.
On the other hand, when to think of it, an individual =/= their demographic, and it makes sense for Magneto not to care about human prejudices, especially when comfronting a mutant.

[deh_tommy]

Unless I’m mistaken, I believe Magneto is German. I imagine he viewed such prejudices as another case of humans being silly and one of the reasons mutants should be in charge instead.

[cyberghostface]

It makes no sense whatsoever that Magneto would espouse views like this and be homophobic at the same time.

[tinygaylaura]

Agreed

The entire reason Magneto is so pissed off at humanity is because of how bigoted we are to anyone or anything we see as "Different" as he has seen up close

Him being homophobic would be ridiculous

[tinygaylaura]

There is absolutely nothing about Magneto's background that makes me think he would be at all homophobic and I'm glad that it's firmly canon that he isn't

And I doubt Magneto remotely cares about the "Norms" of any human society at any point in history

I imagine that Moriarty was bragging about having access to a spy camera or one that can take pictures from a great distance away here since there is no other way Mystique wouldn't have noticed him or one of his spies taking the photographs

I am okay with the characters not having to deal with homophobia in this story. Stories calling out bigotry are important but it's also nice to have stories where we just get to exist and have fun without dealing with some brainless bigots

Charlene and Jessie are both trans so there were two other trans characters in the story as well as the story about the She Hulk cosplayer here.

I do agree that it would have been awesome to see Angela

[dianakingston]

Homophobia and AIDS? That shit was cliche twenty years ago, where are your priorities?

[leahandillyana]

Queer experience is not all unicorns and rainbows, and ignoring more painful aspects of it only makes cishet majority and more priviledged queer people content with current status quo. For Somnus specifically, he is portrayed as a queer man from an older generation, a generation that was specifically devastated by the AIDS pandemic. AIDS is the reason we have so few male queer elders, and having it not be adressed in a story of a male queer elder leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[deh_tommy]

^^^

[tinygaylaura]

I mean his story was about how he denied himself a real life and had to make do with living his true self in dreams because the time he grew up in meant he felt he couldn't be out as himself

[deh_tommy]

Aw, does Angela not show up at all? That sucks. I miss her.

[tinygaylaura]

:(

I do too

[cyberghostface]

Why would Magneto be homophobic when he has never been depicted as such?

[rfmcdonald]

Moriarty might not have been homophobic, or very homophobic, but his plan was to use the threat of homophobia from everyone to force Irene into a relationship with him.

[tinygaylaura]

I think the fact he wanted to force a lesbian woman to marry him and resented a woman marrying her demonstrates he was absolutely a bigot

And that just makes me even happier that Mystique dealt with him the way creatures like him should be dealt with here by putting him down

[rfmcdonald]

His actions do not necessarily require personal homophobia; it would be much the same story if he tried to blackmail her with a comparably unsuitable male Mystique. Moriarty might well not be personally homophonic at all, simply seeing this as another lever he can apply

Agreed that his use of it makes him repugnant, whatever went into that. All I can say is that his plan makes me wonder not so much "Did Moriarty want to die?" as "Why did Moriarty want to die so badly?".

[tinygaylaura]

"There were a lot of ways to commit suicide on Krakoa

If you weren't careful you could do it without even realising it"

[rfmcdonald]

There is something I find deeply satisfying about people who set out to do evil only to find that they catastrophically—fatally—misjudged the situation.

[tinygaylaura]

Its the only proof that there is some justice in this universe

[rfmcdonald]

Moriarty seems to have had a colour camera; that would have been rare indeed.

There is no particular reason to think that Magneto, as a German Jew, would necessarily be homophobic. There had been a whole current of gay activism in Germany cut off by the Nazis, after all, to say nothing of what Magneto himself might decide.

Angela should have appeared, I agree.

[tinygaylaura]

Indeed

Before the filthy disease that is the Nazis infested the country like roaches and spread the brain rotting cancer that is their ideology which turned the country into a worthless repuslive piece of shit that not even a maggot would want to live in, Germany was a country that was progressive in a number of ways and many people living there had very intelligent, progressive and accepting attitudes toward sex, sexuality and gender

Unfortunately many of these brilliant and intelligent people were the first victims of nazi atrocities :(

Though in an example of karmic justice the Nazis hatred of anyone who wasn't a knuckle dragging fascist cretin with an IQ in the negative digits who was probably the result of generations of incest helped the correct side win the war as the Allies had brilliant minds like Alan Turing and the people working on the Manhattan Project while the Nazis had a collection of drooling psychopaths who thought the earth was hollow and white people were special because they were descended from magical elves

[rfmcdonald]

Radical xenophobes and nativists tend to make terrible decisions generally.

I really do not see Magneto as the type to unthinkingly accept prejudices; he is very substantially a self-made man. "IDGAF" was made for him.

[tinygaylaura]

It is one of the many reasons I love him

And yeah, it's hilarious that xenophobic and nationalistic bigoted assholes seem to love to act like they are the "Master Race" or words to that effect when the truth is that they are very clearly inferior to everyone and everything else on the planet

I'd sooner put a concussed dog with fleas in charge of the world than any of these fascist morons and the tin foil hat garbage that make up their boot licking followers

[rfmcdonald]

The Claremont reinvention of Magneto as a.much more.morally.complex individual, something that Oliveira uses here,.is one that works for me nicely. This is just a really sweet moment, and funny, too. "Sometimes missiles are how grownups talk."